Financial Humor Bulletin, January 2009
As for amount of destruction, is not Wall Street now looks like a role
model for Osama bin Laden? How about destructive potential of Chuck
bin Schumer and other senators ?
bosshog 1/29/2009 12:29:42 PMCucking Frooks!!!
qtrhorse 1/29/2009 12:39:30 PMTo Paraphrase a former president's
speech about the Berlin Wall, "Mr. Obama, take back that money."
freddy_fremont 1/29/2009 12:44:14 PM What's ironic
is that the posters on here who will defend this type of behavior are
1) probably driving the most beat-up, broken-down, used cars 2) have
the lowest incomes and 3) are the complete financial opposites of the
fat cats. Never underestimate the power of denial, folks.
wcmillionairre 1/29/2009 12:49:12 PM
The most impressive thing about Obama is how poorly-conceived his
newest "bailout" proposal is, in terms of his stated objectives. The
man simply knows how to leverage political posturing. We must understand
it will be "business as usual" for both politicos and CEOs. So much
poppycock...
Snark 1/29/2009 12:58:49 PM
Ask Chuck Schumer how outraged he is.
exsfr 1/29/2009 1:13:27 PM
I have to apologize for finding this amusing. I mean it's ironic
that the taxpayers, many of which are struggling financially, end up
paying bonuses to wall street bankers pulling in hundreds of thousands
if not millions of dollars. I guess we have to thank Barney Franks and
the other congressional geniuses...
evilbush 1/29/2009 2:06:02 PM
I'll run your company into the ground for a mere $2,000,000. That's
a steal --
evilbush 1/29/2009 2:09:29 PM
Goodbye free market. Hello flea market.
nonunion 1/29/2009 2:11:47 PMA peanut recall hah?... How about
a Corporate Fat cat recall?... They make me sicker.
bigskyguy 1/29/2009 2:13:07 PMThere goes the money I was counting
on to trickle down to me.
Hat tip to Naked Capitalism for republishing the letter and thus bringing
additional readers to this brilliant post from "The price of Everything"
blog. Some gems:
-
I would also be grateful if the strategists and economists who work
for you could abstain from publishing their unsolicited opinions about
resolving the banking crisis within the financial media. I am sure you
will agree that hearing from the same strategists who worked for the
architects of such widespread financial destruction is likely to irritate
those of us who were not actually complicit in the extraordinary and
venal credit boom of the last several decades.
-
...the high profile commentators who work for you and who have implicitly
played their part in marketing and then amplifying this catastrophe
might consider quietly entering another field with superior ethics and
enhanced value to society at large: perhaps as piano players in brothels.
Re. your unauthorised
overdraft
Dear Western banking
establishment,
I notice that your
unauthorised credit facility from international lenders of last resort
now totals approximately $10 trillion. As a taxpayer and therefore your
largest shareholder I would be grateful if you could repay this facility
at your earliest convenience. I have charged you an additional £30 for
this letter and a monthly unauthorised overdraft fee of £28. If you
do not repay this facility shortly I will have no choice but to become
further massively impoverished along with legions of fellow taxpayers
for multiple generations to come.
I would also be grateful if the strategists
and economists who work for you could abstain from publishing their
unsolicited opinions about resolving the banking crisis within the financial
media. I am sure you will agree that hearing from the same strategists
who worked for the architects of such widespread financial destruction
is likely to irritate those of us who were not actually complicit in
the extraordinary and venal credit boom of the last several decades.
There is an expression that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re
part of the problem. Those of your employees who were the public face
of the problem are, I think you will agree, unlikely to represent the
solution, unless perhaps they are fired – en masse, from a
giant howitzer, into an area where they can do no further harm. Alaska,
perhaps. I would further suggest that the
high profile commentators who work for you and who have implicitly played
their part in marketing and then amplifying this catastrophe might consider
quietly entering another field with superior ethics and enhanced value
to society at large: perhaps as piano players in brothels.
This note has been copied to the letters editors of The Financial Times
and The Wall Street Journal (which I understand is shortly to be renamed
simply The Journal on the basis that Wall Street no longer actually
exists – as was noted this week by Messrs Wen Jiabao and Vladimir Putin
at Davos. Don’t worry about not being there – you weren’t missed).
Since the start of
the year is always a time for slimming and working off the excesses
of the festive period, I wonder whether your industry would consider
operating along similar lines. Just as there is no real need to have
18 different coffee bars all touting their wares along my High Street,
there is probably no real need to have 18 different banks, not all of
which are subsidiaries of Santander, clogging the High Street and busily
not wanting to extend me back any of my own money so generously lent
to them.
I would also be interested
in your views as to the wisdom and efficacy of the monstrous pile of
credit being shovelled at you and your peers by governments when it
was overmuch credit creation that precipitated this crisis. I do not,
of course, expect anything other than a self-interested response. But
you may find the following observations pertinent. If they seem acutely
relevant today it is because they were written in the early 1930s, by
one Garet Garrett
(and a grateful hat tip to M. Gandon):
“The general shape
of this universal delusion [that is, credit] may be indicated by
three of its familiar features.. First, the idea that the
panacea for debt is credit.. The burden of Europe’s private debt
to this country now is greater than the burden of her war debt;
and the war debt, with arrears of interest, is greater than it was
the day the peace was signed.. Debt was the economic terror of the
world when the war ended. How to pay it was the colossal problem.
Yet you will hardly find a nation, state, city, town or region that
has not multiplied its debt since the war. The aggregate of this
increase is prodigious, and a very high proportion of it represents
recourse to credit to avoid payment of debt.
“Second,
a social and political doctrine, now widely accepted, beginning
with the premise that people are entitled to certain betterments
of life. If they cannot immediately afford them.. nevertheless people
are entitled to them, and credit must provide them.. Result:
Probably one half of all government, national and civic, in the
area of western civilization is either bankrupt or in acute distress
from having over-borrowed according to this doctrine.. Now as credit
fails and the standards of living tend to fall from the planes on
which credit for a while sustained them, there is political dismay..
When [people] have been living on credit beyond their means the
debt overtakes them. If they tax themselves to pay it, that means
going back a little. If they repudiate their debt, that is the end
of their credit. In this dilemma the ideal solution, so recommended
even to the creditor, is more credit, more debt.
“Third,
the argument that prosperity is a product of credit, whereas from
the beginning of economic thought it had been supposed that prosperity
was from the increase and exchange of wealth, and credit was its
product.”
"At a time when everything is suddenly up for grabs, some things
are best left out of reach."
I’d like to propose that February 1st be, this year and forever,
known and celebrated as “Greater Fool’s Day!”
What better and more fundamental a theme for Americans to observe (at
least once a year) than the lust for fast cash, easy money, celebrity
lifestyle and fame and fortune leading to the inevitable national panic
and widespread financial ruin.
Yes, on this day we can pay homage to all the half-baked Ponzi-schemes
that have ever swept our great nation, drawing in throngs of wide eyed
“investors” full of optimism and greedy animal spirits only to finally
see them crapped out again as total losers faster than our country’s
macroeconomic fabric could withstand.
And what better a generation of Americans to begin this celebration
than our current?
There is a scene in the film classic
Casablanca when Captain Renault, the head of the local
police, finds out that there is gambling going on in the cafe owned
by Humphrey Bogart's character. Renault's reaction was to say that "I'm
shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" Of course,
Renault knew about the activity and was taking a few dollars on the
side.
President Barack Obama blasted Wall Street for shameful and irresponsible
behavior after reports that Wall Street paid $18.4 billion in bonuses
in 2008.
...an ambulance goes by and Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker wonders whether
that's another bank being taken the hospital
Raoul Felder, the Manhattan divorce lawyer, said that cases involving
financiers always stack up as the economy starts to slip, because layoffs
and shrinking bonuses place stress on relationships — and, he said,
because “there aren’t funds or time for mistresses any more.”
(One such mistress wrote on the blog that when she pouted about not
having been taken on a trip lately, her married man explained that with
money so tight, his wife had taken to checking up on his accounts.)
Bronte Capital
The
helicopter post has had the most reaction of any post on this blog.
I guess that is the territory when you suggest that the solution to
the financial crisis is to literally throw money from helicopters.
Nonetheless I wish I could get that sort of reaction to a more serious
post.
The reaction to the helicopter post fell into three categories:
- those that didn’t get it
- those that got it but may have had
ethical problems, and
- those that understood it all too well.
I got one comment – via email – which explained very simply why the
helicopter proposal wouldn’t work. I think that commentator’s
argument is accurate – so – at the end I will lay it out and (tentatively)
withdraw the helicopter proposal.
Those that didn’t get it
There seemed to be several comments (email and on blog) which suggested
that it would be better if we just gave everyone a tax holiday (payroll,
income, death duties depending on where in the political spectrum the
commentator was).
This does not cut it. The purpose of the proposal (throwing
money out of helicopters) was not to distribute money (for which plenty
of effective mechanisms exist). The purpose was much more radical
– to remove trust in money itself.
The proposal I made was remarkably cheap (a $2 billion solution to
a multi-trillion dollar problem) and if it works it works for purely
psychological reasons – which is that it is so reckless and irresponsible
that nobody could ignore the inflationary impacts of Federal Reserve
policy. Reckless and irresponsible (and small) was the charm of
this proposal.
Indeed I suggested in the comments that it would work even better
if Bernanke continuously surrounded himself with buxom prostitutes paid
out of freshly minted moolah, but that image was just too horrific –
even for this purpose (although it may be effective).
Some that simply got it
There were a couple of posts that simply got it. The cutest
came from someone calling themselves the German Trader who put it very
simply (if in very poor English):
You only give something away when you think it is worthless and
what you get is of greater worth. While seeing the riots after Bens
helicopters came past I surely want buy a new car.
Kieren (who I do not know) pointed out that the trick was really
to produce inflationary expectations (and hence to get people to spend)
without producing inflation. That is why this might work.
The amount of money involved is small ($2 billion versus over $2 trillion
in money supply) so its effect should also be small – but the expectations
effect could be enormous. That was – in theoretical terms – what
I was trying to achieve.
Some who got it and raised ethical objections
There were a few ethical objections raised – firstly by people who
thought I was right that this policy would cause riots and deaths and
then promoted more responsible ways of doing the same trick. The
people killed in riots are collateral damage of a deliberately irresponsible
policy. I don’t know how to weigh one life versus another – but
this financial crisis will kill hundreds of people before it is over
– either suicides or more bluntly hunger in some countries badly hit.
The ethical objection is real – and I have no solution. The policy
proposed is deliberately irresponsible – and irresponsibility causes
death in some instances.
The main ethical objection I expected was about property rights and
theft. I wrote the post in Australian hours and it was seen by
Australian/Asians then English/Europeans and finally by North Americans.
I had to wait until American waking hours for someone to point out
the obvious - which is that the policy being advocated was the deliberate
theft of property (deliberate inflation being theft). Europeans
somehow seem less concerned than Americans about property rights.
I am usually very harsh on government policies which involve the
removal of property rights simply because those policies are usually
counter-productive. There are plenty of posts on this blog along
those lines. However those posts are argued on a facts-and-circumstances
basis – the abrogation of property rights is argued as a problem in
this instance and property rights are not automatically given full moral
status. That is my position generally – honouring property rights
is a good thing to do because it generally leads to better outcomes.
I understand that some people (almost all Americans and including many
readers of this blog) have raised property rights to full ethical status
(along with for instance the rights to liberty etc). Not my ethics
– but I understand – and the outcomes are usually OK so I am generally
happy to leave that form of right wing fundamentalism alone.
I prefer argue for property rights from an outcomes perspective (as
incidentally did Adam Smith*). Your blogger does not really wish
to comment on the property rights as a moral precept here – other than
to note for some people this really is fundamental. Just leave
it at that.
The commentators that got it all too well
The comment on the post which got the most comment from other commentators
was someone that got it all too well. The comment was that – as
a result of this policy – some right wing “nut” would load a truck with
fertilizer and diesel and blow up the Federal Reserve.
Some people objected to calling that person a nut – but I have no
other word for suicide bomber of any persuasion. More to the point
– this person – and eventually many others – would realise what this
policy was about – which is removing all trust from dollars – and hence
theft of one ideal that they hold quite dear.
The question which was raised in emails was about how you would reintroduce
trust after you have destroyed it. I think that is actually a
key problem. Trust is essential for an economic system in general
– but trust in money at the moment is quite destructive as people would
prefer hold enormous quantities of money rather than build real assets
and employ real people. However you can’t build real assets and
employ real people without trust either. The helicopter proposal
is targeted at getting rid of trust in one place and one time only (the
trust in money in the rare instance of a liquidity trap). Whether
you can conduct a strike that surgical with a helicopter full of rolls
of money is open for question. Military strikes are nowhere near
as precise as the pictures on CNN.
Finally – the real objection
This came in an email from one of the most astute commentators on
my blog:
It won't work because immediately after the drop, Congress would
arrest Bernanke along with the entire Fed board (probably replace
it with a money czar)…. Politicians would be forced to promise responsibility
and accountability in the face of the threat of civil unrest - don't
forget, a lot of people own guns legally in this country. There
will be new laws designed to keep the value of the dollar. In the
end, the dollar would get stronger, not weaker…
In other words the whole idea won’t work because it is actually not
possible to be that irresponsible – that the underlying US system is
sufficiently strong – that if Bernanke were that irresponsible he would
simply be replaced.
If Bernanke can’t plausibly be quite that irresponsible we might
as well park the helicopters.
And if you can’t use monetary policy to solve this recession then
alas we are left with what appears to be two inferior choices (a) a
fiscal expansion of gargantuan proportions or (b) letting the system
burn and winding up in a great depression type scenario. Both
are unpalatable – but I would vote for the fiscal expansion.
It would be much better to just load up that helicopter. Alas...
CafeMom
"... Do you think Robert Reich would make a plausible ambassador
to Mongolia?"
Pavel Chichikov | 01.24.09 - 10:52 pm |
[Jan 24, 2009] Writers of CDS protection analogy:
trying to collect nickels in front of a bulldozer by selling a lot
of protection.
[Jan 24, 2009] Bush achievements during the last six months
Don't Cry for Me Tehachapi writes:
"in five YEARS!"
maybe, but his last seven months weren't all bad:
- all 5 major investment banks wiped from the face of the earth like
the shit stains they were
- gasoline back at 1.50
- equities back to rational 15 p/e levels
- housing more affordable than it has been in 7 years
- normal yields for corporate paper and superjumbo bonds relative to
risk
- foreign creditors still totally deluded about treasuries
gotta look at the bright side, and give credit where its dueDon't
Cry for Me Tehachapi | 01.24.09 - 11:05 pm |
#
The horse ( the FIRE sector) is dead in the pasture having eaten toxic
oats (debt)...
mmckinl | 01.24.09 - 10:26 pm |
#
===
sdbri writes:
Credit ratings agencies have openly been engaging in payola, the same
way you can always find an appraiser to give you the price you want.
sdbri | 01.24.09 - 10:30 pm |
#
===
"if only the government starts allowing the free market to work again."
hilarious, democrats save "free market"
who was killing it?
irreverent | 01.24.09 - 10:48 pm |
#
[Jan 24, 2009] He spent what?! by Izabella Kaminska
Jan 23 | FT.com
On
reports former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain spent over $1,200,000
decorating his office and distributing up to $4bn in discretionary bonuses
just three days before the BofA acquisition, we here at FT Alphaville
are prepared to give the beleaguered executive the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps there was a reason he was so hell bent on spending every
penny Merrill had? Perhaps there was a secret deal struck between him
and Bernanke behind the scenes, much like this
one. Just imagine, a new Fed policy based on teaching bankers how
to stop wasting money the hard way.
“I’m going to do to you what my daddy did to me, I’m going to teach
you to hate spending money, I’m going to make you so sick of spending
money that the very sight of it will make you want to throw up. You
have 30 days to spend $4 bn bucks, if you can do it then you
get a bailout.”
Jan 23, 2009 | CalculatedRisk
Enjoy ...
Selected Comments
"And I know why they call it Fannie..."
scone (i can haz catfood?) | 01.23.09 - 5:42 pm |
#
===
The system is reconfiguring itself around bailouts and deficits.
ac | 01.23.09 - 5:46 pm |
#
.
===
..some laid off Wall Street traders were taking their chances in
Vegas, rather than trading their own cash for income (?!)
Anonymous | 01.23.09 - 5:52 pm |
#
===
"Anyone care to describe all the attributes of a "broad deflationary
cycle"?"
when the viagra wears off?
elmer fudd | 01.23.09
===
Angry Saver writes:
Since these banks bring nothing to the table except a taxpayer guarantee,
shouldn't the taxpayers be the only ones to profit?
No. In this eCONomy, profits are for the bankers. However, if you have
good credit, they will loan you back some of your own money - at a higher
interest rate and on stricter terms of course.
Angry Saver | 01.23.09 - 6:12 pm |
#
===
RockyR writes:
I'm starting to get immune to bad news. It's kinda like crack.
Gotta have a stronger and stronger dose to feel an impact.
The world-as-looney-bin is starting to feel like normal. Someone
losing money? No problem! Just bail em out with some tax
dollars. There are no repercussions.
Whoever always signs off with "This will not end well"... they
are right.
/sigh
After even the most liberal-minded, open-government-committed party
takes hold of the reins of government, it takes never more than a single
term of office, four years - five at the most - before paranoia takes
over. Disagreement becomes dissent, dissent becomes disloyalty,
disloyalty becomes betrayal and betrayal becomes treason. The
public interest merges seamlessly with the private interest of the incumbents.
The state bureaucracy, where it has not been taken over by government
loyalists on day one of the new administration, is gradually transformed
into an arm of the government. Some formal checks and balances
often remain, parliament and the courts among them, but they too are
often feeble to begin with and weaken further as the term office of
the incumbent government lengthens.
From comments
“1125 A.D. In this year before Christmas King Henry sent from Normandy
to England and gave instructions that all moneyers … be deprived of
their members … Bishop Roger of Salisbury commanded them all to assemble
at Winchester by Christmas. When they came hither they were then taken
one by one, and each deprived of the right hand and the testicles below.
All this was done in twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, and
was entirely justified because they had ruined the whole country by
the magnitude of their fraud which they paid for in full.” - The Laud
Chronicle (E)Posted by: All I want for Christmas.............. |
December 31st, 2008 at 4:43 am |
Report this comment
Nero is probably rolling in the grave...
Bloomberg.com ...
John Thain, the former
Merrill Lynch & Co. chief executive officer ousted yesterday, spent
$1.2 million redecorating his downtown Manhattan office last year as
the company was firing employees.
[Jan 21, 2009] So, what will be the word or phrase for 2009?
I nominate "sovereign default".
"The nation's financial institutions are well captalized!" is so
2007.
Aren't bailouts supposed to be bitter? Unless you're Bill Gross.
"The punchline: it's full of water."
1/20/2009 |CalculatedRisk
Actually Bailout Bitter! Credit: Barley. Enjoy Responsibly !!!
.
Calculated Risk
DuckDuckGoose writes:
# Stocks tumble on fresh worries about banks- AP
The key word being "fresh".
Is the best propaganda that the government/media complex known as the
AP can churn out?
DuckDuckGoose | 01.20.09 - 10:52 pm |
#
Send lawyers, guns, and money writes:
"If you experience an overhang of more than 1.5 million units, contact
your health-care provider immediately."
Send lawyers, guns, and money | 01.20.09 - 10:56 pm |
#
"The Baby Boomers have had their moment in power. The most spoilt
generation in history has handled affairs with its characteristic hedonism.
The results are coming in. The blithering idiots."
Quote of the day. Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz
A joke on the streets of Moscow these days: "Everything the Communists
told us about communism was a complete and utter lie. Unfortunately,
everything the Communists told us about capitalism turned out to be
true." —John Nellis, World Bank
30 years is a nice term after which neither advisor not client remember
what was the initial portfolio allocation ;-). And of course classic
is: "I don't want one of those get rich quick schemes, but I need
a lot of money in a hurry" ...
Shown below is the first entry in the Help Desk section of the February
issue of the nation's most popular personal finance magazine.
Hmm... what might happen if some pragmatism is applied to the matter?
Here's an alternate answer that might be provided by a rogue Help Desk
editor at Money Magazine who, perhaps, had some great revelation one
day about how the world really works and isn't afraid to share it with
readers, up until the time he or she is asked to pack up their belongings
and head for the front door:
Robert,
Short-term, long-term - it really doesn't matter what type of investor
you consider yourself to be these days.
You see, the asset allocations that our magazine have provided won't
help you much for at least a few more years, maybe as much as another
five or ten years. That is, until we get through this long-term
bear market in stocks that, to be honest, we really should have
caught on to by now.
But no, we keep telling people that they need to have a healthy
allocation of stocks even when they're well into retirement because,
even though things changed dramatically in equity markets back around
the turn of the century, readers still believe us when we show those
historical return charts with average annual gains in the double-digits.
People actually think that they'll get the returns of a stock bull
market during a bear market, so we keep tellin' em do load up on
stocks.
Truth be told, you'd have been much better off with an all-cash
investment portfolio for almost the last ten years and if my employers
weren't so obsessed with pleasing their advertisers who are peddling
their stock funds for 401k plans (the bulk of our readership) maybe
some of us would have told you that years ago.
Geez, you could have tripled your money in gold since the stock
bull market turned into a bear - some of us here have been invested
in gold for years now, but telling readers to do that would never
pass muster with the boss.
Anyway, this might be my last bit of writing for MoneyMag. I hope
it helps.
- Rational Roger, Staff Writer
Comments:
-
Anonymous said...
-
"Choose your investments based on the return you need? Nice."
I need to double my money by the end of the day. Whaddya got?
To quote H. Simpson: "I don't want one of those get rich quick schemes,
but I need a lot of money in a hurry".
Barron’s Alan Abelson comes forth with the reason why the terrorists
have not attacked the USA since 9/11.
They didn’t have to:
Thanks to his vigilance, this nation was spared a terrorist attack
after 9/11. And so it was, for which we are all profoundly grateful.
And only the most vehement Bush-basher would sniff that
the real reason for the absence of an
attack was that Mr. Bush did such a thorough number on the country
all by himself that the terrorists figured, why bother?
One Response to “Fed Went Acourtin’”
km4 Says:
This quote is more true today than in Depression years….
“We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions
the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board.
This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United
States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done
this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control
it”.
— Congressman Louis T. McFadden
[Jan 16, 2009] Chicago school of justice by
Paul Krugman
Forgive and Forget?, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times:
Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would
seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration.
“I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but
“we need to look forward as opposed to looking
backwards.”
[Jan 16, 2009]
Splitty-Group By Barry Ritholtz
January 16th, 2009 | The Big
Picture
Oh terrific: We are going to have two medium size piles, instead
of one giant compost heap.
Is this going to be a good bank/bad bank split, or is it more accurate
to say its a bad bank/worse bank ?
Better late then never ;-)
In an unexpected judicial turnaround, the Supreme Court this week reversed
its 2000 ruling in the landmark case of Bush v. Gore, stripping
George W. Bush of his earlier political victory, and declaring Albert
Arnold Gore the 43rd president of the United States of America.
Enlarge Image
President Gore, retroactively determined by the Supreme Court to
be the winner of the 2000 election, is sworn in for his six-week term.
The court, which called its original decision to halt manual recounts
in Florida "a ruling made in haste," voted unanimously on Wednesday
in favor of the 2000 Democratic nominee.
Gore will serve as commander in chief from Dec. 10 to Jan. 20.
"Allowing this flaw in judgment to stand would set an unworkable
precedent for future elections and cause irreparable harm to the impartiality
of this court," said Chief Justice John G. Roberts in his majority opinion.
"Furthermore, let me be the first to personally congratulate President
Gore on his remarkable come-from-behind victory. May he guide us wisely
into this new millennium."
Quote of the day
Arthur awoke to the sound of argument and went to the bridge. Ford
was waving his arms about. "You're crazy Zaphod," he was saying, "Magrathea
is a myth a fairy story, it's what parents tell their kids about at
night if they want them to grow up to be economists, it's..." —Douglas
Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 16.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for
a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. (Matthew 19:24)
The American Prospect
Comments
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
– and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless
series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
...My God. Honor? I’d rather have infected hemorrhoids. These at
least are not a mental aberration. Well, depending on where your head
is.
Honor means nothing
more than prickly infantile vanity dressed up, usually, in desperate
class-consciousness. Of all the symptoms of a weak ego, honor is the
most embarrassing, and the most harmful. In a right-minded society it
would be made a capital offense. (In women honor usually means chastity,
also a bad idea but not nearly as pernicious.)
I do not mean
to rail against the virtues, manly or otherwise. A few of them seem
to have merit. Courage is doubtless admirable, at least when not engaged
in by criminals or ambitious soldiers. Loyalty to friends in the face
of adversity is to be commended. Common decency has its allure and occasional
practitioners. Honesty? I think it worth trying, though with care until
we ascertain its effects. But honor? It is a sure indication of a bad
character.
Consider its
usual display throughout history. A duke or baron, or some such befeathered
artifact of excessive inbreeding, encounters another, a count perhaps,
or more likely a no-count, who is in a bad mood. This latter says, “Yomama,
Monsieur. Your granny wears combat boots.”
Whereupon the
duke, instead of saying, “Oh buzz off, Lancaster, before I York a knot
on your head” – this would be sensible and therefore inadmissible in
affairs of honor – takes off his glove and throws it on the ground.
This benefits dry cleaners, though a man with one glove looks eccentric.
Anyway, this constitutes a Challenge, more to common sense than anything
else.
And so the Duke
and the Count meet on the Field of Honor, in the manner of small boys
settling a dispute on the playground after school, but with more gauds
and glitter. A duke disposes of greater resources than does a third-grader,
though this may be the only distinction. After fulsome precedent ceremony,
they fight with swords, suggesting grave inner dimness, until one pokes
the other, who thereafter waits for peritonitis to set in. The survivor
stalks off with the ostentatious pride of a swamp bird in mating season,
his honor satisfied.
Smarter people
would settle quarrels by playing marbles, I think.
Now, credit where
credit is due. Most often, the code duello approach to honor served
to rid society of men it would be better off without. A country can
prosper without dukes, while a strike by the plumbers would be disastrous.
But sometimes
the effects of aggrieved vanity were actually deleterious. In 1832,
Evariste Galois, a preternaturally talented French mathematician, died
in a duel at age twenty, fortunately having invented the theory of groups
beforehand. His was an extraordinarily unuseful foray into the practice
of honor. What might he have done had he insisted on marbles? Honor
has a high price.
Military men
are particularly susceptible to notions of honor, and should be indoctrinated
against it in their formative years. They employ it largely as a veil
covering their actual business, which has generally consisted in killing,
raping, burning, and pillaging, in putting cities to the sword, massacring
the unwilling conscripted peasants of the opposing army, and generating
widows, orphans, and prisoners for the slave trade.
None of this
would seem particularly honorable if examined carefully, so it carefully
isn’t. The soldierly focus is on teary-eyed memories of fallen comrades,
on the bravery of the cavalry at Balaclava or of the leather-jacketed
bomber crews who burned a hundred thousand civilians to death per night,
and such like.
The infantilism
undergirding honor can be seen in the game of chicken. This curious
parallel to aristocratic bloodletting was played decades ago by brooding
teenagers with ducktail haircuts and a pack of Camels rolled into the
shoulders of their tee-shirts. One adolescent duelist-in-waiting would
insult another in some mortal manner. “Yer a yellow-belly Yankee,” perhaps,
or “You’re a four-eyed sissy.” The other, experiencing a hormone surge
frequently confused with a call of honor, accepts the challenge to play
chicken. They’re going to settle it man to man, though emotionally they
belong in diapers.
So they meet
in their cars at night on a deserted stretch of road, each with friends
as witnesses and supporters (exactly like nominally adult duelists with
their pistols and seconds: there is no difference). The witnesses get
out and the antagonists, facing each other from behind the wheels of
their cars at a distance of perhaps a mile, race furiously at each other
like rutting mountain sheep. The idea is that whoever swerves to avoid
a collision is a coward, and thus besmirched. Of course they then both
survive, and can continue trying to tap the cheerleaders.
Here is the very
essence of honor, an engorged, all-consuming vanity, a willingness to
die for one’s ego. Marbles, I insist. Much better.
This irrational
behavior finds a place in international affairs. In fact, it comes close
to being international affairs. One sees
it often in the unwillingness of countries (read: psychological short
men in charge of countries) to back down when nothing important is at
stake, or to cut their losses when hobbyist wars go awry.
As noted, today
our thunder-thump patriots say that we must find an honorable exit strategy
from Iraq. This means that if we can’t steal the oil, we can at least
pretend we won the war gloriously. Again, honor is ego: We aren’t going
to swerve. Better that we bankrupt the country, fill the hospital wards
with paraplegic and blind teenagers, kill who-cares-how-many Iraqis,
than blink. Mine is longer than yours. It is, it is, it is.
Honor is a protective
device for people whose self-esteem needs protection. Picture some archduck
in England – actually “archduck” was a typo, but I think it better conveys
the sense. Anyway, this gorgeous trinket of chivalry, which is itself
a loathsome hotbed of honor, probably has twelve toes from more intermarriage
than a holler in West Virginia, and a thistle-down intelligence, and
the self-reliance of a queen ant. He is a monument to non-hybrid unvigor.
How does he protect
his etiolated parsnip-like self-esteem from some village kid named,
oh, say, Newton, who would regard him as the intellectual equivalent
of a turnip? Easy. He invokes his honor. Defensive vanity. “A mere commoner.
Pish.” Elevated nose, depressed intelligence.
None of this
is necessary. Perhaps the greatest military thinkers in history are
Fredwitz and James P. Coyne, in that order. Dr. Coyne’s proposed exit
strategy is simple: “OK, on the plane. Now.” Should this seem unfathomable
by its complexity, it could be reduced to four words. But no. What general,
what president who has said “Mission accomplished,” is going to admit
that it didn’t work so well? We must leave with honor. Not necessarily
with all our body parts, or all the soldiers we came with, but with
honor.
January 7th, 2009
Look who’s asking for $5 billion of TARP Money:
Is the porn industry up next for a bailout? If porn titans
Joe Francis and
Larry Flynt have anything to do with it, it will.
Yes, ladies and gentleman, the titans of pornography are begging
for a bailout. Joe Francis, creator of the “Girl’s Gone Wild” video
series, and Larry Flynt, founder of Hustler, will ask Congress for
a $5 billion bailout, according to TMZ.
Why does the porn industry need a bailout? Because apparently
even porn is getting smacked by the recession.
According to TMZ website, Adult DVDs (and by Adult, we mean XXX)
sales are, well flaccid. DVD sales are off 22%.
KidDynamite Says:
it’s called REALITY!
barry - you’ll love this cartoon:
http://fridayinvegas.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-learned-it-by-watching-you.html
[Jan 5, 2009] Nice article titles and catch phases
Financial pedophilia is something news...
Wall Street is about to become the new
Catholic Church--the most distrusted and vilified institution in
America. It's hard to top priestly pedophilia (and bishops covering
up for them) for sheer despicability, but Bernie Madoff and his fellow
hucksters are giving the men of clod a close run for their--and our--money.
Hat tip to Big Picture
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All three of the protagonists live in their own little world, the insular environment of the bordello. While they scrap over the dininishing spoils that befall their brothel, they are oblivious to the broader implications of their morally questionable libertairian creedo, the devastation it has wrecked, and the fact that the world outside the walls of their compound is crumbling.
I say a curse on all their houses.
To legitimize the scam.
The Wall Street Urinal is in reality defending the casinos rigged game (and by extension, the higher level gangsters that own and operate it) by defending/legitimizing a highly visible player/loser.
Financial, ‘experts, advisers and gurus’, are now held in as much contempt by the public as the crooked cops, judges, and politicians, that uphold the fast crumbling scam ‘rule of law’ that they ALL operate under.
Pimps, crack whores and used car dealers are now far more more trustworthy than financial experts ... and they have superior, more tangible, products ...
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
More skepticism please!
i on the ball patriot